Innes Chonnel Castle

The castle on Innis Chonnell may have been raised as early as the eleventh century, though its exact origins are uncertain. What is clear is that its thick outer walls and isolated position on the loch made it the original stronghold of Clan Campbell, the seat from which the family's early chiefs governed their growing territory in Argyll before they held any of the other castles later associated with their name.

Sir Colin Campbell, known in Gaelic as Cailean Mór, held Innis Chonnell as his seat during the late thirteenth century, at a time when rival Highland families were contesting control of the west. In 1296 he was killed fighting the Clan MacDougall at the Battle of Red Ford, a defeat that removed the Campbells' leader but did not end the family's hold on the island castle.

In 1308, in the middle of the Wars of Scottish Independence, John MacDougall held Innis Chonnell against Robert the Bruce, using the castle's island position to resist the future king directly. The episode placed the fortress at the centre of the wider contest for control of Argyll, caught between the Bruce cause and the rival claims of the MacDougalls.

Sir Colin Campbell's son, Sir Neil Campbell, married Mary, a sister of Robert the Bruce, tying the family by blood to the royal house it had fought to support. Sir Neil went on to fight for the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the decisive victory that secured Scottish independence and cemented Campbell loyalty to the crown for generations to come.

By the fifteenth century the Campbells had abandoned Innis Chonnell as their main residence, shifting their power base elsewhere as the family's fortunes grew. The island castle was not given up entirely, however: it continued to serve a harder purpose as a prison, holding men whose freedom threatened the political order of the western Highlands.

Among those held at Innis Chonnell was the young Domhnall Dubh, or Black Donald, son of Aonghas Óg and heir to the Lordship of the Isles, imprisoned there after the Battle of Bloody Bay off the coast of Mull in 1484. He later escaped, but after leading an invasion of Badenoch in 1503 he was recaptured and spent the following forty years imprisoned at Edinburgh Castle, never regaining the lordship he had been born to inherit.

Innis Chonnell Castle was in ruins by the nineteenth century, its walls left to the wooded island as the Campbells' centre of power moved permanently elsewhere. The castle and the island together are now protected as a single scheduled monument.